Create Your Own Opportunities

IIn 2010, I made a decision to leave the career I’d been in for 13 years. From my humble beginnings as the pretzel boy at Lackawanna County Stadium I had worked my way through the restaurant industry as a manager and chef. I ran big restaurants and was successful but by 27 I had enough. It wasn’t what I loved.

A Fire With Friends Plays Culture Shock! – Sept 2013

After many years of internal debate, I decided to follow my passion of working in music. But, there was one problem. I live in Scranton! Many great bands have come from the area like Breaking Benjamin, The Menzingers, Title Fight and Tigers Jaw but the city isn’t exactly a hub for the music business.

So what was I to do? Sure we have a Live Nation venue and a few medium size theaters but the openings there are extremely limited.

I created my own opportunities.

I needed to learn the business and how things worked. Stuff like how to book a tour, how to get press and how to market an album. This is when Everyone You Know Entertainment was born. Initially it was meant to be a record label to release friend’s albums but has grown into much more than that. Since 2010 the label has released 9 albums. I learned more every time we had a new record. I figured out how to do an album marketing plan. I learned how to contact the press and how to really put on a full court press with an album release party.

Things were going well with all of the album releases but I still needed to learn more. I still needed to build my network and make connections. At the same time I felt I should give back to my community and local music scene. Culture Shock was born.

My proudest moment was when I organized Culture Shock! Free Music Fest.

Culture Shock was a free music and art festival held at Nay Aug Park in Scranton. It had 2 stages with over 15 acts, an art show, video game tournaments on large projector screens, food and merch vendors, and more. I learned so much about the business from Culture Shock. I worked to promote the festival and even got a local paper to give us the cover! When I started this journey in 2010 all I could do was hope to get press like that.

By creating my own opportunities, I gained valuable experience and connections.

I wasn’t always this way. For years I thought that things would come to me. I had to learn the hard way that you need to go get it. Whatever it is. Take action, create opportunities and you’ll get to where you want to go. I jump started my career by creating opportunity and you can too.

Go get it.

Cory Wolff is the President of Everyone You Know Entertainment, an independent record label based in Pennsylvania and Development Manager of We Spin, an online music marketing education platform. Find out more about him at www.about.me/corywolff